A New Companion
by a-promise-that-i-keep
Summary: The Doctor is amazed when a young blind teenager knocks on his door, and even more when he sees how intuitive she is. With Hazel's bubbly personality and his love of adventure, there are sure to be plenty of surprises in store. Yes, this story contains an OC. Please don't hate. If you don't like OCs just think of her as Rose or something.


**Hi guys!**

**This is an edited version of an RP I did on omegle, so 50% of credit goes to .com. She created Hazel and most of the plotline. I created Kalazarite Four, its natives and the crystal palaces.**

**Unfortunately, neither of us own Doctor Who. **

Hazel Anne, a young 19-year-old girl, was blind.

She'd been blind as long as she could remember – Macular Degeneration that had already been in its final stages when she'd been born had ensured a total loss of her sight within a few months of her birth.

She was walking through the park on a late summer afternoon, enjoying the sunshine on her face, when suddenly she bumped into what, upon inspection, seemed to be an old box. She ran a hand over the smooth, warm surface, frowning upon realising its condition – dirty, with moss and vines tracing their way across the peeling paint. She was entranced. It almost felt as if it were humming beneath her hand. It seemed no-one had used it for years, but this couldn't be right – she knew this park well and she was sure she had never encountered it before, even though she had walked this route multiple times over the past few years. She brushed her long auburn hair out of her face and pressed her ear to the box. As her hand bumped into the door handle she stopped. She knew it was stupid, but out of common courtesy she found herself knocking softly on the worn doors before stepping back and waiting for a few moments, not really expecting anything to happen.

The Doctor was sitting silently in the TARDIS, enjoying a quiet cup of tea in his favourite armchair and indulging in a jammy dodger. He had been in this spot for only a few minutes, and was planning to clean the TARDIS later – as he had landed, a faulty circuit had aged the exterior of the box by several years. He was just about to get up and put his plate and mug away in the TARDIS's kitchen when he heard a soft knock at the door. _Who would knock at my door? _He asked himself. _It's a big blue box. People aren't supposed to pay attention to big blue boxes! _Straightening his bow tie, he opened the doors.

Before him he saw a young girl of around nineteen years old, with long auburn hair tucked behind her ears and beautiful cloudy green eyes. She was wearing a pair of plain denim jeans and a brown t-shirt with spiral patterns in golden thread spread across the front. At her side she held a long white stick with a red tip – the universal symbol to show that she was blind.

"Hello, sir." The girl said. "I'm Hazel." She gave him a stunning smile.

The Doctor was amazed. No-one had ever been intuitive enough to knock at the TARDIS's door before. He had even placed a low-frequency perception filter around the box to be sure no-one would be too curious about it. However, this girl seemed to somehow be completely immune to all of this. _She's definitely blind, _the Doctor thought to himself as he looked at her. Her green eyes, though cloudy with lack of sight, had an odd depth to them.

"Who are you?" Hazel asked, a little concerned that this stranger wasn't speaking. "I'm sorry if I'm disturbing you…" she added, fiddling with her walking stick absent-mindedly. She held out her hand for the person to shake.

The Doctor watched the girl hold out her hand, though he noticed that it was a few centimetres to his left. He took it and shook it gently. "I'm the Doctor." He introduced himself. "Just 'The Doctor'," he added quickly at her confused expression. "Um, would you like a cup of tea?"

The girl, Hazel, smiled. "I would love some tea, thank you," she said, grinning as she stepped into the TARDIS. "It's awfully big in here…" she commented with a small smile. "Thanks for letting me in, though, Doctor," she added.

The Doctor was finding it very odd that this girl wasn't completely overwhelmed by the size of the inside of the TARDIS. _But then, _he thought, _she is blind. She probably thinks that she's stumbled across some massive building with an odd door or something. _He quickly rushed to fix another batch of tea for himself and the girl, grabbing a second packet of jammy dodgers while he was in the kitchen.

"Do you live in this box?" the girl asked him, resting a hand on the control panel of the TARDIS. He noticed that she seemed a little unsure of herself, quickly removing her hand from the panel once she realised that it was covered in controls. "How is it bigger on the inside?"

The Doctor was surprised by her question. "How did you know it's bigger on the inside?" for a blind girl, Hazel was showing herself to be amazingly observant of the world around her.

Hazel smiled, grateful for the compliment. "When you're blind," she explained, "all of your other senses go into overdrive to compensate. When I entered your box, the echoes of my footsteps changed, so I knew it had to be bigger on the inside. If there were a big building near the box I would have heard my footsteps echoing off of the walls, but there was nothing, just the box. So it must be bigger on the inside." She smiled, a little proud of herself, and leaned carefully against a railing to her right, the whole while listening carefully for the Doctor's voice so that she could pinpoint exactly where he was.

"Do you live here alone?" she asked.

There was a pause, and Hazel worried that she had upset him. "Yes," she heard him reply softly. "Yes, I do."

Trying to lighten the mood, the Doctor gently led Hazel to a spare armchair and gave her a cup of tea. Milk with two sugars. _Everyone loves sweet, milky tea._

"This is fantastic!" Hazel exclaimed. "I wish I could see it," she added wistfully, causing the Doctor's heart to clench with pity for the young girl. He felt a twinge of pride for her bravery in being so cheerful.

"So how did you find this box?" he asked. "Most people don't usually knock on my door, you know. Most people just walk away."

"That's pretty dull of them," Hazel replied, "It's an interesting box. I was walking through the park and crashed straight into it. That hurt a lot." She chuckled. "It's a big box of pain."

_A big box of pain. _That phrase echoed through the Doctor's mind and he had to fight to avoid being drawn back into a myriad of flashbacks. _A big box of pain._

Hazel chuckled for a bit at her terrible joke, but soon stopped when she realised that the Doctor wasn't joining her. "Sorry," she apologised. "I don't usually get many people to talk to, so my people skills are terrible, especially my jokes."

"It's all right." She heard the Doctor reply. "Never mind." A small rustle of clothing as he moved, then a slight scrape of a plate being lifted off of a table. "Jammy dodger? She heard him offer. She took one gratefully and bit into it. "These are amazing!" she exclaimed at the delicious taste.

"So why don't you talk to people much?" the Doctor asked her. "You're a polite, intelligent, kind young girl. Someone like you should have loads of friends."

"Yeah…" Hazel said. "Not really many people queuing up to talk to me." _Yeah, right. Who wants to talk to the blind girl? _She felt her smile falter a bit and it took her a second to gather herself back into her usual, fun personality.

"So do you want a tour of the big blue box?" the Doctor asked eagerly. It had been ages since he had last shown someone around the TARDIS.

"Well, I won't be able to see anything, but it would be cool to know the layout of this place!" Hazel responded, grabbing her walking stick as she rose from her chair.

Suddenly the Doctor was struck by a fantastic idea. "Do you _want _to see?" he asked excitedly, his eyes blazing with his brilliant new plan.

"What do you mean?" Hazel queried, tilting her head to the side slightly.

"I think I might be able to temporarily restore your sight." The Doctor explained, his mind wandering to his storeroom deep in the TARDIS. He had a tiny vial of regeneration energy stored in that room, a safekeep in case any of his companions were ever injured severely. He had no companions now, so why should he not bring at least a few hours of joy to this girl?

"Temporarily?" Hazel asked, using the tiny sounds the Doctor made as he shifted his weight from foot to foot to turn her head directly towards him.

"Probably," he replied. "I have no idea how long it will work, honestly, It might even end up to be permanent."

This idea was fantastic! "Yes. Yes, please. I want to see please!" she responded quickly, smiling so broadly she could feel the muscles of her face stretch.

"Fantastic!" came the reply. "I'll be right back. I need to go and find my vial of regeneration energy." She heard several sharp, quick footfalls, then silence. The silence was short-lived, however; it was a few mere seconds before the Doctor's distant footsteps could be heard again, and fairly soon he had returned to the room in which she was standing.

"Is this really going to work?" she asked nervously, suddenly terrified of what might happen if it didn't. She barely knew this man, after all. But then again, what did she have to lose? No family, no friends, and no job. She might as well give it a shot.

"Just stand there," Hazel heard the Doctor say, a second before a pair of firm yet gentle hands shifted her to the side slightly.

The Doctor uncorked the bottle and held it up to Hazel's eyes, the golden energy recognising her blindness and working to fix it.

At first, nothing happened. But soon, the blank whiteness that Hazel had lived with her whole life began to recede. An odd, _bright _sensation invaded her vision.

_Colour, _she realised. _I'm seeing colour. _

At first the colour was dull, barely different from the blankness of before, but soon it became vibrant, huge splodges of different colours covering her field of sight. Slowly, the colours separated into shapes. Reds separated from blues, greens from oranges, moving and becoming more defined to form circles, squares, hexagons. The shapes became more and more defined until eventually the entire scene came into perfect focus.

The main thing in her vision was a large, warmly-coloured circle. It was a face. She wasn't sure how she knew this, but she was certain it was a face. Tied around the neck was a bow tie. She pointed to it. "What colour is this?" she asked.

"Brown." The Doctor replied, smiling.

Hazel had never seen a smile before. It was so amazing to see and it somehow filled her with a renewed feeling of joy. She smiled too.

The Doctor was thrilled to have helped this girl. He watched happily as she ran around, frequently stumbling as she gained hand-eye coordination over time and pointing to almost everything in the TARDIS, asking its colour and sometimes what it even was.

Around half an hour later, Hazel stopped and looked to the Doctor. "Thank you." She said simply. "Thank you so much."

The Doctor smiled. This was fantastic. "Right!" he said gleefully. "How about we take those new eyes of yours out for a real test-drive?" he asked _The Crystal Palaces of Kalazarite Four, _he thought. _That'd be perfect! _

Hazel nodded, her eyes full of happybtears. She pointed to a button on the panel, its colour so bright that it was hurting her eyes, yet filling her with a sense of… _cold. _"What's this?"

"That there is blue." Came the reply. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

She nodded, thrilled to finally know what blue looked like. _The colour of water, _she thought. _The colour of the sky._

"That particular button," the Doctor continued, "launches this ship through space." She looked at him sharply to see him grinning with barely supressed glee.

"Now," the Doctor continued, absolutely thrilled at having someone knew to travel with, even for one trip, "Do you want to see something really amazing?"

"I want to see everything, so, yes." She replied.

"Alrighty then," the Time Lord replied, straightening his bow tie with a flourish. "Geronimo!" he darted around Hazel to begin activating the TARDIS's travel path, gunning the atomic manipulator, jump-starting the Eye of Harmony and releasing the handbrake to send the craft hurtling through the Time Vortex. "Just like old times," he muttered to himself.

Hazel squealed with glee and grabbed the railing as the TARDIS began to shake violently. _Wow, _she thought, _this is amazing! _She smiled as she watched the Doctor move easily around the console in spite of the shuddering of the craft.

All too soon they had arrived on the foreign planet. Hazel jumped up and down with excitement as the Doctor landed the craft. He walked over to the doors and Hazel felt like she was about to explode with excitement.

"Welcome," the Doctor said as he flung the doors open, "to Kalazarite Four."

Kalazarite Four was as impressive as ever – a frozen landscape dotted with enormous ice palaces, each taking up the space of London twice over. The two suns, one purple, one golden, shone through the ice, creating rainbows containing every colour on Earth and then three or four more that not even the natives of the planet had a name for.

The Doctor heard Hazel take in a breath behind him. "I can never thank you enough for this," he heard her say. "I'm standing on a different planet!"

"You're welcome." He replied happily. "Most of the population of Earth will never get the opportunity to see this. These rainbows contain every single colour that can appear on Earth, plus a few extra." He grabbed Hazel's hand, suddenly filled with excitement. "You want a closer look?"

Together Hazel and the Doctor trekked through the oddly warm snow to the nearest ice palace. As they arrived a strange creature came out to meet them. Hazel assumed that this must be one of the natives.

"Welcome," the creature said. She was a humanoid, her skin a deep emerald green with glittering golden markings in patterns across her arms and forehead. She had cat-like ears and a long, slender tail. Her fingers were long and slender with sharp, razor-like blades along the backs of her hands. She was wearing a simple brown shirt and khaki shorts, her feet bare on the ice.

"My name is Kinai'i," she said. "Welcome to the Seventh Ice City of Kalazarite Four."

Hazel smiled and looked at the Doctor. "Wow…" she breathed. "There are six more of these?"

"Well, actually there are forty-eight, but that's not really important." The Doctor replied. "What's important is that you have a nice time here."

Hazel looked around her at the massive ice structure. "I'm having the time of my life." She replied.

The native turned around, her long tail flicking, and led the way to a delicate ice staircase. Hazel looked up at the Doctor, who squeezed her hand reassuringly as they started to follow her.

The Doctor led Hazel up the gorgeous ice staircase to a lookout several stories above the ground. He looked out at the frozen landscape, listening to Kinai'i explain how the cities were built to Hazel. "We carve the rough shapes of the ice using the blades on the backs of our hands before adding the detail using our fingers," she said. "Of course, you, Doctor, already know this."

The Doctor jumped. _How does she know my name? _he wondered. He certainly hadn't told her.

"You know her?" Hazel asked confusedly.

"No," the Doctor replied. "How do you know my name?"

The aged Time Lord thought back to his last visit to Kalazarite Four. He had been with Rose, and they had visited the fourty-second Ice City. There had been an attack on the city and a sonic blast (whoops) had brought down the Crystal Cathedral.

Damn. So that was it. They must have recognised the TARDIS.

Kinai'i's face was contorted with anger. "You are under arrest," she stated, "for damaging the Crystal Cathedral of the Fourty-Second Ice City of the Khmera, home of the sacred Rosetta Gem."

It was at that moment that two pairs of strong green hands grabbed the Doctor from behind.

Hazel felt the blood drain from her face. She owed this man more than she could ever repay and now he was being dragged away. "Doctor!" she called out, seeking guidance as his hand was pulled from hers.

The Doctor struggled as the two Khmera males dragged him away, but being over two metres tall and almost entirely made of muscle made it easy for them to overpower him. The Time Lord watched as Halez's eyes widened in fear. He saw her try to run to him but Kinai'i had placed a restraining hand on her shoulder. The last thing he saw before he was dragged away was her face, forehead creased with worry.

Hazel scowled at Kinai'i. "You can't follow him," she heard the Khmera say. "He's a prisoner now. He must await trial."

"Fine," she replied, "But can you leave me alone for a minute? I need a minute to process this." She put on her best 'upset' face.

Kinai'i bought it, leaving the lookout to walk behind a screen of rough ice.

Immediately, Hazel closed her eyes, straining her ears to hear the sounds around her. She was thankful that there wasn't any wind – if there had been even the slightest touch of breeze it might have messed up her hearing. A grin spread across her face as she picked out the sound of the Doctor speaking in the distance. It sounded like he was several floors down, somewhere diagonally to her left. She carefully made her way down towards the sound, making sure not to make any sound that might alert Kinai'i to what she was doing. The Khmera would soon come to check on her, so she didn't have much time.

The Doctor knew that, given the chance, Hazel could easily track them down using the sound of his voice. He just needed to wait long enough for her to reach him and then they could make a break for the TARDIS. "Under article five thousand and seventeen of the Shadow Proclamation," he declared, "I demand to know the penalty for my crime!"

"Death." One of the males responded with a low growl. The Doctor paled.

"But - but that's genocide!" he protested. "Under article fifty-two of the Shadow Proclamation, genocide, even of regenerative species, is illegal, punishable by the purge of a system!"

Suddenly the Doctor heard a loud crashing down echo down the hallway outside. The two guards marched off to investigate.

Glad that the Khmeras hadn't had time to tie him up yet, the Doctor jumped up, grinning broadly as he saw Hazel's head pop around the door. "Nice distraction," he noted, before they raced back down the staircase and out of the palace.

They heard an enraged yowl behind them and turned to see Kinai'i sprinting down the stairs towards them. The Doctor pulled out his Sonic Screwdriver and used it to cause a few cracks in the nearest wall of the palace. The native stopped dead, her ears flat against her head and her teeth bared in a feline growl.

"I'll do it," the Doctor warned. "Follow me and I'll have this whole place crash down."

Kinai'i growled again but said nothing, pacing back and forth in the entrance of the palace.

The Doctor and Hazel turned and raced back to the TARDIS, taking off as fast as they could.

"Probably shouldn't go there again," the Doctor heard Hazel quip, and suddenly they were both laughing hysterically.

The TARDIS landed and Hazel's face fell. "I guess this is where I leave you," she said. She felt tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.

"Well…" the Doctor said, scratching the back of his head, "you could come with me."

Hazel's face lit up. "Really?" she gasped.

"Sure."

"I'd love that!" Hazel squealed, running forward and hugging the Doctor as hard as she could. "Thank you!"

The Doctor laughed, pulling out of the hug to push a few buttons, launching the pair off on another adventure.


End file.
